From financial benefits to improvements in employee mental health, what’s not to love about the expanding virtual options available to the global workforce? Work-from-anywhere arrangements are 4.4% more productive than workers tied to their office, and geographically diverse workforces lead to 15-35% higher returns. In fact, the Harvard Business Review claims remote work could lead to $1.3 billion more value-add to the U.S. economy every year. Remote workers are a huge asset to the global workforce, and those numbers speak for themselves.
The traditional employee lifestyle of long commutes and collaboration limited to conference rooms was already heading toward evolution. The pandemic forced knowledge-based workers to go remote, leading companies to adopt technology that would have taken decades to fully integrate otherwise.
This is certainly welcome news as there are many undeniable benefits to a remote-first workforce, but the sudden shift is not without its challenges. In this article, we’ll walk through the challenges and best practices associated with each stage of the employee lifecycle from hiring to offboarding and everything in between.
Step 1: Remote Talent Search
Earlier this summer, jaw-dropping findings of a study were published that stated almost half (48%) of workers planned to quit their jobs post-pandemic. According to the report by Prudential, a large portion of the workforce wants to find new jobs that allot better work-life balance, growth opportunities, remote options and just overall respect. On top of thehighest unemployment rate in recent history, it’s harder for recruiters to filter through good candidates and compete for top-tier talent given the sheer number of active job seekers.
Traditionally, employers would be able to bring candidates into the office for meet-and-greets, picking up on body language and non-verbal “culture fit” indicators. They could more easily bond with potential candidates and feasibly boast unique office benefits that would help them compete for top talent. In a virtual environment, though, that’s not as easily accomplished.
To enhance the remote talent search, employers must pay closer attention to their digital profiles, encouraging current employees to write positive reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. The application process must be easy (even via mobile devices) and the response time should be quick in order to capture talent and set the bar for professionalism. Lastly, savvy companies will want to provide HR staff with technology that makes it easier for them to filter through applications.
Step 2: Hiring & Onboarding Remote Talent
Unless there are systems in place to help ease the potentially awkward first few days at a new job, new hires can easily feel disconnected and unengaged. We’ve found that the biggest challenge businesses face when hiring and onboarding remote talent is expectations.
For example, offering competitive benefits is key to having an offer accepted, and when hiring internationally, it’s even more important the company provides compliant and country-appropriate benefits packages. It’s important that a company can communicate these details so that there are no surprises when the employee joins the team.
In onboarding, it’s important to have processes in place that deliver the right level of support and relationship-building for the newest members of an organization (i.e. Who do I report to? Which meetings am I attending?). Without getting a feel for their new co-workers in person, those important questions can linger and even create distrust if an employee is left with unclear direction.
Step 3: Remote Team Management
We’ve touched on how to stay competitive in a remote-first recruiting, hiring and onboarding environment, but let’s not forget about existing employees, managers and leaders. The way established teams have been managed during the pandemic has shifted, and again, there’s been a lot of learning on the job.
We can’t talk about remote work without addressing the adoption of new technology. Like it or not, everything a knowledge-based worker does in a remote-first environment is digital, which can be a blessing and a curse when it comes to remote team management.
A blessing, first, because technology can simplify workloads immensely. Companies can set up virtual team managers for success by equipping them with opportunities to manage their workload digitally. Platforms for idea storing and sharing as well as documenting advances can help teams manage their projects more efficiently.
But technology also opens up the door for burnout and even safety issues. Managers must draw a line in the sand for employees—sometimes even mandating staff log off at certain hours to decrease the risk of burnout. Just as importantly, if leaders plan to manage across time zones, then concerns from employees about safety, their benefits or insurance usage must be dealt with in a timely manner. The solution to this is equipping teams with support in their language and time zone from in-country HR specialists, which can also limit burnout of internal HR teams and managers who would otherwise be responding to questions at all hours.
Step 4: Professional Growth from Afar
In the past when we’d think of professional growth, our minds usually went to things like training courses, conferences, and maybe some team outings once a year. But in our new work environments, these rudimentary tactics won’t add much value.
In order to compete in the global market, savvy companies are adding online mentorship programs, team learning activities, gamification and sophisticated feedback mechanisms to maximize the employee experience. In addition, companies are offering new programs centered around employee wellness like virtual yoga classes, company-wide step challenges or free mental health days. In order for professional growth to maintain a valuable factor within an organization’s overall trajectory, it has to include trust, positive thinking, psychological safety and, of course, be engaging.
Step 5: Remote Offboarding
According to Aberdeen Research, 71% of private companies don’t have a formal employee exit process in place. Clearly, offboarding is very often overlooked, but it can be valuable in its own right. In fact, companies can even create brand ambassadors among ex-employees if offboarding is handled in the right way.
Yes, saying virtual goodbyes can be uncomfortable, especially if dealing with cultural barriers, but companies can look past that and turn lemons into lemonade. To keep things positive, businesses can consider bringing in cultural experts or professional coaches for when they require in-country HR expertise. Ensuring cultural sensitivity and transparency of language can soften the blow of terminating contracts, and it also helps improve the experience for those charged with offboarding their colleagues.
Aside from staying on good terms with employees, there’s another layer to offboarding: security and compliance. While (ideally) most offboarding is voluntary, there are certainly many involuntary offboarding scenarios for which we must account. In these situations, the logistics of it all can be difficult to manage because it’s more than likely the employee in question has access to company equipment and sensitive files. IT and HR departments should work closely so that there is no lag in revoking access and even invest in tools that prevent insider threat to any proprietary information.
As many of us have come to understand in the last year or two, everything is a learning process at the start, and the most successful remote-first companies we’ve seen are those that are adaptable, learning and shifting through the new normal.
With so many eager employees ready to make a change in 2021, it’s important organizations stay competitive by assuaging their stakeholders to a remote-first future. Partnering with an Employee of Record is one of the best ways to ease concerns of risk or overhead because it takes the complicated legal and administrative burdens off the shoulders of leaders and entrepreneurs. With local support that helps companies navigate the expansion process, they can focus their energy on making their organization one that can capitalize on this exciting next chapter in the global workforce.
Latest posts by Nicole Sahin (see all)
- 5 Steps to Conquering the Remote-First Future - July 10, 2023
- How To Build An Agile Global Growth Strategy - February 4, 2021
- Why International Growth Needs World Class Legal Infrastructure - October 26, 2020
